Let's Take Another Look At Peter Strzok

Information about Peter Strzok, best known for his thousands of e-mails to his FBI office girlfriend Lisa Page, has come out piecemeal over the years, with little overall context. The e-mails and texts in many ways make Strzok look like a comical figure -- as a radio host put it at the time, "Imagine being in junior high school with a name like Strzok."

Among the most controversial of the texts was Strzok's response to Page's query asking if Trump could be elected. To which Strzok replied, "No, we'll stop it."

. . . During the texts with Strzok, Page also said, Hillary Clinton "just has to win now," and "This man cannot be president."

The texts were made public in December 2017, and resulted in both Strzok and Page being removed from their posts as part of then-special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Strzok was eventually fired by the FBI, while Page left her position in May 2018.

In fact, Strzok's Wikipedia entry suggests Trump's suspicions of Strzok were a conspiracy theory:

News of the text messages led Trump, Republican congressmen and right-wing media to speculate that Strzok participated in a conspiracy to undermine the Trump presidency.

But as they say, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. In yesterday's post, I linked to a 2020 Politico story that described an otherwise unremarked Oval Office meeting on January 5, 2021. Obama and Biden, with a little over two weeks to go before Trump came in, were meeting with FBI Director Comey on the path forward. But who should be there with Comey to take notes but Peter Strzok? This if nothing else suggests that Comey had a great deal of trust in Strzok's absolute discretion.

The first mention of Strzok working with Comey in Strzok's Wikipedia entry is in the context of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's e-mail server. Strzok had been with the FBI since 1996, while Comey was appointed FBI Director by Barack Obama in 2013.

Strzok led a team of a dozen investigators during the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server and assisted in the drafting of public statements for then-FBI Director James Comey. He changed the description of Clinton's actions from "grossly negligent", which could be a criminal offense, to "extremely careless". The draft was reviewed and corrected by several people and its creation was a team process. In his statement to Congress, Comey said that "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring charges based on available evidence. Later, when additional emails were discovered a few days before the election, Strzok reportedly supported reopening the Clinton investigation. He then co-wrote the letter which Comey used to inform Congress, which "reignited the email controversy in the final days" and "played a key role in a controversial FBI decision that upended Hillary Clinton's campaign."

But not only was Strzok serving as Comey's catspaw in the Clinton e-mail investigation, he was the agent who singlehandedly started the Crossfire Hurricane investigation in July 2016:

To the untrained eye, the FBI document that launched Crossfire Hurricane can be confusing, and it may be difficult to discern how it might be inadequate. To the trained eye, however, it is a train wreck. There are a number of reasons why it is so bad. Two main ones are offered below. . . :

First, the document is oddly constructed. In a normal, legitimate FBI Electronic Communication, or EC, there would be a “To” and a “From” line. The Crossfire Hurricane EC has only a “From” line; it is from a part of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division whose contact is listed as Peter Strzok. The EC was drafted also by Peter Strzok. And, finally, it was approved by Peter Strzok. Essentially, it is a document created by Peter Strzok, approved by Peter Strzok, and sent from Peter Strzok to Peter Strzok.

On that basis alone, the document is an absurdity, violative of all FBI protocols and, therefore, invalid on its face. An agent cannot approve his or her own case; that would make a mockery of the oversight designed to protect Americans. Yet, for this document, Peter Strzok was pitcher, catcher, batter and umpire.

In addition, several names are listed in a “cc” or copy line; all are redacted, save Strzok’s, who, for some reason, felt it necessary to copy himself on a document he sent from himself to himself.

Names on an FBI document are always listed in cascading fashion, with the most senior at the top and on down to the least senior. On this EC, Strzok is listed last, so the redacted names should be more senior to him. Those names could well include then-FBI Director James Comey, then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and then-Counterintelligence Assistant Director Bill Priestap. The document also establishes these redacted names as “case participants.”

It's hard to avoid thinking Strzok was doing Comey's bidding in this, in addition to the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation. The first phase of the e-mail investigation ran from May to July 2016, ending with Comey's ghostwritten "no reasonable prosecutor" statement Strzok wrote for him. Yet by July, Strzok was also the key actor who initiated Crossfire Hurricane. When more Hillary classified e-mails surfaced in October, Strzok was again on that job.

Nevertheless, throughout this period, Strzok was exchanging thousands of e-mails with Lisa Page on the FBI system. It's hard to imagine how Strzok found time for the political side of his job, but he clearly did. According to Wikipedia,

From late July to November 2016, the joint effort between the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Agency (NSA) examined evidence of Russian meddling in the presidential election. The FBI's team enjoyed a large degree of autonomy within the broader interagency probe.

"The FBI's team" would basically have been Peter Strzok, as far as I can see, and he would have been communicating regularly with Comey and the other FBI chiefs. So with a short break for the holidays, he's in the Oval Office on January 5 talking about using the Logan Act against General Michael Flynn. Strzok's Wikipedia entry says, "He oversaw the bureau's interviews with then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn; Flynn later pled guilty to lying during those interviews."

There was a series of meetings between Trump and Comey from February 2017 to Trump's firing of Comey as FBI Director in May, in which Trump repeatedly inquired about the investigations of Flynn, Crossfire Hurricane, and other matters. It's hard to avoid thinking that Strzok was closely apprised of all these.

Following Trump's firing of Comey in May,

The Robert Mueller special counsel investigation was an investigation into 45th U.S. president Donald Trump regarding Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and was conducted by special prosecutor Robert Mueller from May 2017 to March 2019.

. . . The dismissal of James Comey was a factor in the decision to use a Special Counsel. The Mueller investigation took over the FBI's investigation, Crossfire Hurricane. The Mueller investigation's scope included allegations of "links and/or coordination" between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.

But then, remarkably, via Strzok's Wikipedia entry,

In July 2017, Strzok became the most senior FBI agent working for Robert Mueller's 2017 Special Counsel investigation looking into any links or coordination between Trump's presidential campaign and the Russian government. He served in that position until August 2017, at which time he was moved to the Human Resources Branch.

. . . Strzok left the investigation in late July 2017 after the discovery of personal text messages sent to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer, during the 2016 election campaign, which criticized Trump and said he would "stop" Trump.

Strzok stayed with the FBI for another year in what the Japanese call a "window seat", but it appears that he was removed from direct involvement in anti-Trump skulduggery in July 2017. I suspect that there's a great deal more that Trump already knows, and probably more than that he has still to learn. I have a feeling more will come out in the near future.

Let's Revisit L'affaire General Mike Flynn

Flynn to Comey: "Jim, If you get this message, Get ready. You’re going jail -- Unless you give up someone bigger and deeper in this than even you.

Jim, you know exactly who I'm talking about..."

Holy crap! Nice job, @bennyjohnson pic.twitter.com/1OkGZl5Mgm

— L A R R Y (@LarryOConnor) February 27, 2025

General Mike Flynn, an early casualty of the Get Trump campaign, has briefly popped back up in the news lately. Most recently, it was in the dark warning to former FBI Directior James Comey that surfaced yesterday on X. He was also the subject of intriguing remarks by President Trump last week:

On Tuesday night [February 18], Trump made an appearance at his private Florida beach club, Mar-a-Lago, which played host to a gala for America’s Future, a right wing organization chaired by retired Gen. Michael Flynn. TPM reviewed portions of Trump’s remarks, during which the President declared he was eager to see Flynn, who had a short and scandalous stint as White House national security adviser in 2017, make a return to government.

“Let me tell you, this guy, he’s the real deal,” Trump said with a beaming Flynn at his side. “He’s a real general and I told him — I offered him about ten jobs.”

. . . “I think he’s doing so well he doesn’t need them, but I offered,” Trump explained. “I said, any time you want to come in, you know that Mike, OK?”

So what was the context of Flynn's message to Comey on X that he's going to jail? Let's take a look at the Flynn saga, at least as we know it:

Michael Thomas Flynn (born 24 December 1958) is a retired United States Army lieutenant general and convicted felon who was the 24th U.S. national security advisor for the first 22 days of the first Trump administration. He resigned in light of reports that he had lied regarding conversations with Russian ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak.

. . . In February 2016, Flynn became a national security advisor to Trump for his 2016 presidential campaign. . . . On 22 January 2017, Flynn was sworn in as the National Security Advisor. On 13 February 2017, he resigned after information surfaced that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and others about the nature and content of his communications with Kislyak. Flynn's tenure as the National Security Advisor is the shortest in the history of the position.

In December 2017, Flynn formalized a deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to plead guilty to a felony count of "willfully and knowingly" making false statements to the FBI about the Kislyak communications, and agreed to cooperate with the Special Counsel's investigation. In June 2019, Flynn dismissed his attorneys and retained Sidney Powell, who on the same day wrote to attorney general Bill Barr seeking his assistance in exonerating Flynn. Powell had discussed the case on Fox News and spoken to President Trump about it on several occasions. Two weeks before his scheduled sentencing, in January 2020 Flynn moved to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming government vindictiveness and breach of the plea agreement. At Barr's direction, the Justice Department filed a court motion to drop all charges against Flynn on 7 May 2020. Presiding federal judge Emmet Sullivan ruled the matter to be placed on hold to solicit amicus curiae briefs from third parties. Powell then asked the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to compel Sullivan to drop the case, but her request was denied. On 25 November 2020, Flynn was issued a presidential pardon by Trump On 8 December 2020, Judge Sullivan dismissed the criminal case against Flynn, stating he probably would have denied the Justice Department motion to drop the case.

Exactly what happened with the FBI and Flynn has never been completely clear. According to this October 2020 Politico story, then-FBI agent Peter Strzok made notes summarizing a January 5, 2017, "Oval Office meeting at which President Barack Obama, FBI Director James Comey and other national security officials discussed Flynn’s contact with Russian officials." Based on the context of the story, then-Vice President Biden was also in the meeting.

Strzok’s notes indicate that Biden mentioned the Logan Act — a little-used 18th Century law that criminalizes efforts by private citizens to conduct U.S. foreign policy. The FBI internally discussed using the Logan Act as a basis for its decision to interview Flynn a few weeks later as it investigated his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. Ultimately, FBI and DOJ officials say the interview was conducted as part of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Strzok’s notes provide no context about why Biden raised the Logan Act, if it was in response to anyone else or how any officials responded. Biden has previously acknowledged being present in the Oval Office during the discussion of the Flynn matter and indicated he was broadly aware of the FBI investigation.

. . . other documents released by the DOJ indicate that the notion of pursuing a Logan Act charge against Flynn first emerged inside the FBI on Jan. 4, 2017, a day before the Oval Office meeting occurred. Messages exchanged between Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page on that day reveal a discussion of the obscure law. Strzok provided the text of the statute to Page, as well as an analysis by the Congressional Research Service that noted the Logan Act had been in relative disuse for more than 200 years and could be unconstitutional.

. . . Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russia’s U.S. ambassador in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration. Though he cooperated with special counsel Robert Mueller for a year, he has since moved to rescind his guilty plea and allege misconduct by the FBI and prosecutors, who he accuses of coercing his initial plea to pursue a case against Trump. Attorney General William Barr ordered a review of the case in January and ultimately agreed to drop in in May. But Sullivan has so far resisted acting quickly, instead appointing an outside adviser, who has accused Barr of acting overtly to shield an ally of the president.

Comey testified last month that he had no recollection of Biden raising the Logan Act during that Jan. 5, 2017 meeting and isn’t sure why Strzok’s notes included the notation.

“I would remember it because it would be highly inappropriate if a president or vice president suggested prosecution or investigation of anyone. And it did not happen,” Comey said.

The transcripts of the Flynn-Kislyak calls were released on May 29, 2020. Key passages involve an exchange over whether last-minute actions by the outgoing Obama administration could lock the Russians into responses that would damage relations with the incoming Trump administration:

Kislyak then requests that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump have a video meeting on a “secure video line,” so that Putin can “congratulate” Trump and “discuss a small number, briefly, of issues that are on his agenda,” for Jan. 21, 2017.

Flynn says: “OK,” before telling Kislyak: .“What I would ask you guys to do — and make sure you, make sure that you convey this, okay? Do not, do not uh, allow this administration to box us in right now, okay?”

Flynn is referring to the Obama administration’s move to sanction Russia and expel dozens of Russian diplomats due to what he calls “cyber stuff,” and urges Kislyak not to escalate further.

“What I would ask Russia to do is to not—is—is—if anything—because I know you have to have some sort of action—to, to only make it reciprocal,” Flynn said. “Make it reciprocal. Don’t-don’t make it-don’t go any further than you have to. Because I don’t want us to get into something that has to escalate, on a, you know, on a tit for tat. You follow me ambassador?”

Certainly in hindsight, this comes off as an entirely appropriate discussion between the Russian ambassador and the US national security adviser-designate only weeks before his administration would come into office. It was intended to ease the transition. The Logan Act, seldom invoked and probably unconstitutional, would have been irrelevant, but it was used as a predicate for an FBI investigation in which flynn was accused of "lying" to agents.

L'affaire Flynn looks now as if it was part of an ongoing effort by Comey to undermine Trump, particularly in the context of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation:

Crossfire Hurricane was the code name for the counterintelligence investigation undertaken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from July 31, 2016, to May 17, 2017, into links between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia and "whether individuals associated with [Trump's] presidential campaign were coordinating, wittingly or unwittingly, with the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election". Trump was not personally under investigation until May 2017, when his firing of FBI director James Comey raised suspicions of obstruction of justice, which triggered the Mueller investigation.

The Mueller investigation then led to an investigation by the Justice Department Inspector General, who unsurprisingly found no political bias by the FBI. But this led then-Attorney General William Barr to assign John Durham to lead an investigation into Crossfire Hurricane, which Durham slow-walked into irrelevance.

The result up to now is that, although we have a pretty good record of Comey working closely with the outgoing Obama administration to continue bogus investigations of Trump after his first inauguration, so far, there hasn't been a good accounting of Comey's and the FBI's full conduct. Flynn's cryptic remarks, especially in the wake of the Comey "honey pot" allegations, make me wonder if this could change. Who's the one bigger than Comey that Flynn refers to on X? Well, both Obama and Biden were in the January 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting, where Comey himself said "it would be highly inappropriate if a president or vice president suggested prosecution or investigation of anyone."

Right.

That Was Quick

TULSI GABBARD ANNOUNCES SHE HAS TERMINATED ALL 100+ NSA EMPLOYEES INVOLVED IN TRANSGENDER SEX CHATS.pic.twitter.com/231wPk02a4

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) February 26, 2025

The post above, reporting on Director Gabbard's announcement on the Jesse Watters show at 10:45 PM, followed the one below, timestamped 3:26 PM.

Memo sent. We know who they are. Action is underway. https://t.co/dC3fV1D9ZO

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) February 25, 2025

It appears that someone sent Christopher Rufo, co-author of Monday's City Journal article that broke the story, this screen shot of an NSA trans chat thread from this past December 20. If they didn't see this coming, they certainy should have.

EXCLUSIVE: In a secret NSA chatroom, NSA, DNI, and SpaceCom officials claim that @TulsiGabbard is "fervently anti-queer," a "Russian agent," and a member of the MAGA "cult." These employees, including at least one "they/them," are attempting to undermine Gabbard from within. pic.twitter.com/Z5HGfdSx2Y

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) February 25, 2025

As someone who's written corporate policies on authorized use of IT resources, the apparent NSA policy reported in the City Journal article is pretty standard:

According to an NSA press official, “All NSA employees sign agreements stating that publishing non-mission related material on Intelink is a usage violation and will result in disciplinary action.”

A firing for this sort of thing by a non-government employer would probably stand up in court. A difficulty here might arise if the fired NSA employees claimed this use was specifically authorized:

[T]hey did so with the full support of NSA leadership, which declared that DEI was “not only mission critical, but mission imperative.”

On the other hand, anyone in NSA leadership who said this would be fired himself. It looks like similar purges will be under way in the FBI:

FBI leadership is starting an investigation into the origins of the agency’s plan a decade ago to infiltrate the campaign of presidential candidate Donald Trump using two female undercover “honeypot” agents.

The off-the-books investigation, launched in 2015 by FBI Director James B. Comey, was revealed by an agency whistleblower in a protected disclosure to the House Judiciary Committee last year and first reported exclusively by The Washington Times in October.

In the intelligence community, a honeypot commonly refers to an undercover operative, usually a woman, who feigns sexual or romantic interest to obtain information from a target.

. . . The whistleblower agent “personally knew” that Mr. Comey ordered an FBI investigation into Mr. Trump and that Mr. Comey “personally directed it,” according to the disclosure.

The investigation did not appear to target a specific crime but was more of what agents would describe as a fishing expedition to find anything incriminating against Mr. Trump.

. . . “The case had no predicated foundation, so Comey personally directed the investigation without creating an official case file in Sentinel or any other FBI system,” according to the whistleblower’s disclosure. “The FBI has multiple methods of protecting highly sensitive investigations, so Comey did not have a legitimate reason not to officially create an official investigation file or have a file number.”

. . . The investigation was eventually closed because a major newspaper obtained a photograph of one of the undercovers and was about to publish it, but the FBI press office told the outlet that the photograph was an FBI informant who would be killed if the photograph was publicly released.

In fact, it was a photograph of the FBI undercover employee.

The FBI whistleblower employee noted in the disclosure that one of the undercovers agreed to be transferred to the CIA so she would not be available as a potential witness.

. . . The other undercover employee was rewarded for her activities through a promotion in the bureau and is now a high-level FBI executive in a major field office.

The whistleblower employee observed one or more employees in the FBI being directed to never discuss the operation with anyone ever again, including other people involved in the 2016 Trump campaign infiltration operation.

It looks like Trump's appointees are moving very quickly over cases like this. And if one set of FBI executives can tell employees never to mention it, a new set can tell them to explain it all, in detail. This should be juicy.

Many visitors have probably noted that Blogger put up a flag on yesterday's post warning users that it had sensitive content. It seems that this only demonstrated the Streisand effect yet again:

Streisand effect, phenomenon in which an attempt to censor, hide, or otherwise draw attention away from something only serves to attract more attention to it. The name derives from American singer and actress Barbra Streisand’s lawsuit against a photographer in 2003, which drew attention to the photo she was suing to have taken off the Internet.

It spiked my traffic yesterday and today. Maybe Blogger will do it some more -- I hope so!

Thoughts On The NSA Trans Chat Rooms

There's been a lot of reaction on alt media yesterday and this morning to a City Journal piece by Christopher F. Rufo and Hannah Grossman, The NSA’s Secret Sex Chats.

We have cultivated sources within the National Security Agency—one current employee and one former employee—who have provided chat logs from the NSA’s Intelink messaging program. According to an NSA press official, “All NSA employees sign agreements stating that publishing non-mission related material on Intelink is a usage violation and will result in disciplinary action.” Nonetheless, these logs, dating back two years, are lurid, featuring wide-ranging discussions of sex, kink, polyamory, and castration.

You can go to the link and the various stories on alt sites for the lurid details, and I don't see much point in belaboring them here. The UK Daily Mail carried the reactions from the Trump administration:

[Director of National Intelligence Tulsi] Gabbard, who oversees the 18 American spy agencies, responded to the report promising to clean house and confirmed the existence of the chats, which have been destroyed.

'This behavior is unacceptable and those involved WILL be held accountable. These disgusting chat groups were immediately shut down when @POTUS issued his EO ending the DEI insanity the Biden Admin was obsessed with. Our IC must be focused on our core mission: ensuring the safety,' she wrote.

Elon Musk also had a crack at the news and referenced his email asking workers to explain their duties each week: 'Well... at least we know what they did last week.'

. . . An NSA spokesperson told Rufo that the chats were real and that they're 'taking actions against any and all employees who abused this system.'

Several questions came up for me concerning the details of the chats. First, just to establish the context here, I double-checked the numbers. An NIH study estimates the number of transgender individuals in the US as 390 adults per 100 000, or almost 1 million adults nationally. This comes out to .002% of the US population of 340 million. Many of the chats in the City Journal story purport to cover male-to-female bottom surgery.

However, according to UVA Health,

Gender reassignment (confirmation) surgery is more common in transgender men (42 to 54%) than transgender women (28%). Top (chest gender confirmation) surgery is performed approximately twice as often as bottom (genital) surgery. In studies that assessed transgender men and women as an aggregate, top surgery accounts for 8 to 25% and bottom surgery accounts for 4 to 13%.

Just for convenience, then, let's say 10% of trans men have had bottom surgery -- at least we're getting some idea about order of magnitude. So if there are maybe 1 million trans men in the US, although this is using the total for both genders, and these figures are iffy in any case, if 10% of trans men have had bottom surgery, we're talking somewhere around 100,000 people total in all 50 states. But apparently enough of this small group works, or worked, for the NSA to be a significant part of the workforce and secure management support for a chat group on agency time using agency resources. According to the City Journal report at the link,

Activists within the agency used LGBTQ+ “employee resource groups” to turn their kinks and pathologies into official work duties. According to the current NSA employee, these groups “spent all day" recruiting activists and holding meetings with titles such as “Privilege,” “Ally Awareness,” “Pride,” and “Transgender Community Inclusion.” And they did so with the full support of NSA leadership, which declared that DEI was “not only mission critical, but mission imperative.”

Oddly enough, DOGE has surfaced a separate trans influence operation within the intelligence community, of which USAID, source of the funds in question, is a major part:

Stonewall could be forced to cut up to half of its staff after President Trump’s decision to freeze foreign aid, The Times understands.

Workers at the [UK] LGBTQ+ charity were told on Thursday that restructuring would take place, and that only roles with dedicated funding would be safe.

. . . Sources said they believed up to half of the workforce could be made redundant in the move, which they were told would “secure the future of Stonewall for the long term as a significant LGBTQ+ organisation able to deliver impactful campaigns and legislative change across the UK and further afield”.

Insiders believed the announcement was linked to decisions made by Trump over the provision of foreign aid.

But isn't this just a different way of saying a key UK trans influence operation was astroturf funded by the US deep state? And the US deep state, judging from the NSA chats, has been working on behalf of a tiny minority within a tiny minority, viz, trans men who have had bottom surgery -- or at least claim to have had it. I question how much of the talk in the chats was pure moonshine. At the City Journal link,

Last January, chatroom members discussed their practice of polyamory, or “ethical non-monogamy.” “[A] polycule is a polyamorous group,” one employee explained. “A is my [girlfriend], and B-G are her partners. . . . then B&C are dating but not C&D, nor E, F, or G with any of the others, though there are several MWB (metas-with-benefits) connections.” Another employee claimed to be part of a nine-member “polycule,” adding that “some of our friends are practically poly-mers, with all the connected compounds.”

A lot of this must be simple baloney, tall tales on taxpayer time. On one hand, this is money going down a black hole, but on the other, the story raises legitimate concerns, especially if this is mostly just guys reinforcing each other's fantasies:

These NSA chat logs suggest the presence of at least hundreds of gender activists within the intelligence services who cannot distinguish between male and female, and who believe that discussing castration, polyamory, and “gangbangs” is an appropriate use of public resources. For psychological and ideological reasons, these kinds of people will not be easily sidelined.

Well, as Musk put it, at least we know what they did last week. And for that matter, how many of these people "work from home"? If Musk's tactics of creative destruction are effective in getting rid of them, so much the better.

What Is It About Trans That Triggers Supporters So Badly?

Last week's conflict between President Trump and Maine Gov Janet Mills over allowing biologically male athletes to compete in women's sports brought up a puzzling issue: supporters of trans people quickly become hysterical and profane in their arguments, even in violation of ordinary decorum. For instance,

The governor of Maine’s chief of staff publicly melted down and cursed at a White House official on Saturday over the state’s dispute with the White House on men in women’s sports, a senior White House official told The Daily Wire on Saturday.

The incident allegedly occurred as Alex Meyer, the White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, spoke with a group of gubernatorial chiefs of staff on Saturday morning in Washington, D.C., the senior White House official said. When Meyer told Jeremy Kennedy, the chief of staff for Maine Governor Janet Mills, that the state must follow the law and protect women’s sports, Kennedy allegedly responded, “F*** you, you a**hole,” before storming out of the room.

A spokesman for the governor denied this to The Daily Wire on Saturday morning, saying: “Jeremy did not say those words. He did not engage in profanity.” The governor’s office did not immediately respond to further requests for comment about the altercation and did not deny that Kennedy was upset and stormed out of the room.

A second incident took place within the same few days last week:

The Justice Department accused a judge Friday of “hostile and egregious misconduct” in her handling of a high profile case dealing with President Donald Trump’s executive order on trans-identifying troops in the military.

DOJ Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle informed Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan on Friday that United States District Court Judge Ana C. Reyes engaged in such conduct toward DOJ’s attorneys, suggesting bias and disrespect toward the DOJ’s position and imperiling a fair weighing of the case.

. . . “While Judge Reyes was not sure exactly how many sexes there were, she hypothesized that could be ‘anywhere near about 30 different intersex examples,'” the DOJ letter states. “It was during these lines of questioning that Judge Reyes engaged in the unacceptable misconduct at issue in this complaint, questioning a Department of Justice attorney regarding his religious beliefs and then using him unwillingly as a physical prop in her courtroom theatrics.”

. . . “What do you think Jesus would say to telling a group of people that they are so worthless, so worthless that we’re not going to allow them into homeless shelters?” she allegedly asked. “Do you think Jesus would be, ‘Sounds right to me’? Or do you think Jesus would say, ‘WTF? Of course, let them in?”

“This line of questioning is deeply problematic for several reasons,” the DOJ letter said. “First, the question has no relevance to the legal analysis of military policy. Second, it placed DOJ counsel in an untenable position of either appearing unresponsive or speculating about how an incoherent hypothetical aligns with Judge Reyes’ personal religious beliefs.”

. . . The DOJ also took issue with Reyes’ use of the phrase “WTF,” meaning, “what the f***,” as she questioned an attorney on his religious beliefs, saying that it “sheds light on the severity of the judge’s lack of professional decorum.”

. . . The DOJ said that Reyes told its counsel: “I made a change to my standing order when I was in the back. My new standing order says that no one who has graduated from UVA Law School can appear before me. So, I need you to sit down, please. I need you to sit down.”

“When counsel complied with this directive, the judge continued her hypothetical about UVA law graduates being banned from her courtroom because ‘they’re all liars and lack integrity,'” the letter continued. “Only after Judge Reyes used counsel as a physical prop did she instruct him to come back up to continue the proceedings.

The most effective argument in favor of transsexualism and related issues like biological male athletes competing as women is that gender dysphoria is a medical condition, and those who suffer from it are entitled to scientifically based medical treatment. But if these are scientific and medical issues, why are those who argue for transsexuals so easily triggered into intemperate behavior, profanity, and violation of decorum? But this is clearly a pollitical, not a medical or scientific issue.

Vocal Trump opponent Stephen King came out in support of Gov Mills:

Author Stephen King on X, formerly Twitter, wrote: "Governor Janet Mills to Trump: 'See you in court.' Makes me proud to be a Maine man. Thank you, Governor, for standing up to the bully."

But in general, this isn't an issue to which the majority can rally. Newsweek quoted an opponent from the Gay Men's Network, a UK organization that opposes the use of measures like puberty blockers:

If I had told you in the 1980s that you would cheer on men depriving women of sporting glory, dignity in their changing rooms or the right to fair play on school fields, you would have thought me mad. The bully here is you and your governor. Your victims are girls playing sport.

What politicians like Mills seem to assume is that the trans issue embraces a whole LGBTQ+ spectrum, when the more conventionally same-sex attracted aren't fully on board with the more radical pansexualists. Lesbians in particular haven't been with the program:

Wild guess, but I’m going to say it has something to do with the way that so many [trans males] barge their way into women’s spaces and then complain that women are being mean, or bigots, or TERFs, or whatever, when they push back and assert their right to their own spaces, many of which they need to feel safe, and most of which they fought hard to achieve in the first place.

It might also have something to do with the fact that these men LARPing as women have massive institutional power behind them, making them feel empowered to throw their weight around (sometimes literally) and bully and threaten anyone who says they have no right to claim things reserved for women.

Somehow the politicians who wield this institutional power, like Maine Gov Janet Mills, see the same-sex attracted as part of a cohesive group of pansexualists, and championing the rights of trans biologiocal males, the smallest and most extreme specialty interest, will gain them the support of all the others. Thus we see Gov Mills cavorting at a drag performance:

Whoa!

This is the governor of Maine, Janet Mills

What a freak!

For some of these people the LGBTQ agenda is a perverse sort of sacrament.

No wonder she’s willing to lose federal funding for the whole state, rather than stop with the perversion. pic.twitter.com/SyudwC4ISN

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) February 23, 2025

This is a major misreading of the public mood. The public hysteria by supporters of men competing in women's sports isn't a winning strategy.

Elon Musk Tells The Bureaucrats To Explain What They Do

Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.

Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2025

During my career, I worked for government agencies at various times as an employee, a conttactor, and an employee of private companies who performed work on site at government agencies. I would say that the problem of staff who have no discernible duties is universal, hardly limited to government, although it's more visible there.

I recall some years ago reading an account of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's time as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission between 1982 and 1990. According to Wikipedia, he was credited with improving the efficiency of the EEOC. Settlement award amounts to victims of discrimination tripled, while the number of suits filed decreased.

The account I read, but haven't been able to find now, said that one of his techniques for doing this was to go down to the cafeteria in the mornings and insist that the employees finish their coffee and go back to the office. I thought of this sometime later when I was working for a quasi-government agency that was in a building with a cafe on the ground floor. I would often go down there for lunch, but not for much else.

One day, the proprietor came to my table and asked, "Do you work for XYZ upstairs?"

"Yes," I said.

"Do you know you're the only one who works there who isn't down here all day long? You come down for lunch, and that's it."

I know I had weekly meetings with my boss, where I was expected to do exactly what Elon Musk now says federal employees will be expected to do, give their boss a list of things they'd done over the past week. I always did this, although sometimes, as any smart subordinate would do, I maybe overstressed some of the importance of one or another item. But at each of these meetings, my boss became increasingly exasperated, picking through each item in more and more detail. "You said you did this. But how long did that really take you?"

"Maybe half an hour," I might say. "But it was one of the things I had on the project plan, and I got it done."

"But you're just setting this whole list up to make yourself look good." I didn't have much to answer -- I thought subordinates ought to be entitled to give the best account of themselves. But later I heard my boss was known for always being out in the building courtyard on a more or less permanent cigarette break.

At another job, I was working for the company I've described here before, Technology Associates. I was at a customer site as the on-site rep. The manager there one day called my boss at TA, I'm not sure why. and said, "He's one of the best workers I have. He's here on time every morning, and he gets right down to work."

My boss at TA gave me a call. "I've been hearing you get to work on time, and you get right down to work. They think very highly of you. Do you know what that says to me? It says you're trying to put yourself between TA and the customer." I thought I was supposed to make TA look good, but I knew that if I answered that, I'd be in even more trouble.

Well, the problem of employees who don't do anything isn't limited to government, but it's certainly there. Via The Atlantic,

President Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk justify dismantling the civil service as cost cutting. The federal government has “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse,” Trump claimed earlier this month, and Musk has complained about a “staggering amount of waste of taxpayer money.” Their actions—a barrage of executive orders, memos, layoffs, and attempts to unilaterally eliminate entire agencies—have sparked outrage, but Musk sees that only as proof of their achievements: “They wouldn’t be complaining so much if we weren’t doing something useful.”

. . . The Trump administration has created a toxic work environment. I’ve spent 25 years studying public administration and have never seen anything like the deep sense of dread that federal employees are now experiencing. I spoke with workers who feared reprisal if their names were published. One told me that there’s an “eerie” mood in the Census Bureau office: “No one can openly discuss anything.” Another civil servant said that people who’ve worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for decades are afraid and “can’t believe what’s happening.”

Press reports of Musk's demand that workers document what they've done indicate that this is simply the same thing he did when he took over Twitter in 2022.

The day before Musk closed his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, which he’s re-dubbed X, he walked through the front door with a sink. Starting within hours of his takeover the following day, Musk took something like a hacksaw to the company, moves that he said were essential to “save” the company but that caused chaos.

. . . Still, while the takeover may have hurt Twitter employees, users, advertisers and – at least in one sense — Musk’s own pocketbook, it has also added to his own personal power. Over the summer, Musk used X to try to sway public opinion in favor of Trump. And since Trump’s reelection, Musk now has the president’s ear and an office in the White House — and he’s become tens of billions of additional dollars richer, on the back of expectations that his connection to Trump will benefit his empire of companies.

And for that reason, he may have little incentive to change his employment – and layoff – strategy in his new role at DOGE.

My view is that Musk simply understands how the world works and acts accordingly.

The Ukraine Policy Dilemma

A couple of recent articles at Real Clear Politics display the muddle of conventional thinking about Ukraine. In Compact, which describes itself as "an online magazine founded in 2022, seeks a new political center devoted to the common good", with Ivy Leaguers on its masthead, we find Reality Is Winning the Ukraine Narrative War:

While the Russian and Ukrainian militaries have been clashing violently on the bloody battlefields of Eastern Europe, a parallel war has long been underway in the media sphere, where armies of information warriors have battled to shape the ways Western publics think about the conflict.

The dominant army in this information war has comprised most Western governments and leading media organs, abetted by a formidable array of public relations firms working in partnership with the Ukrainian government. It has insisted that the Ukraine war is best understood as a modern-day variation of Nazi Germany’s World War II aggression, with Putin reprising the Hitlerian role of revanchist dictator seeking to grab land and dominate Europe. Unless he is stopped through resolute military force, they argue, his armies will move from Ukraine to the Baltic states, Poland, and beyond.

Arrayed against this army has been a loose band of realist experts and anti-establishment skeptics who contend that the war’s origins more closely resemble those of World War I. To varying degrees, they acknowledge that Russia’s paternalistic attitudes towards Ukraine have played a significant role in Moscow’s motivations, but they argue that the invasion is fundamentally the product of what international relations theorists call a “security dilemma.” Steps by NATO to bolster the security of its members and aspirants were perceived as threatening by Moscow. Aggressive efforts by Russia to block these moves threatened the West, producing a spiral of action and reaction that continued to escalate absent diplomatic efforts to arrest it.

This is something of a straw man good guy-bad guy narrative, whereby anti-establishment skeptics battle the evil establishment. The problem is that right now, the establishment -- for instance Foreign Affairs -- seems to be on the side of the skeptics, at least as far as NATO is concerned:

At last week’s Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting in Brussels, newly minted U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared that the position of the U.S. government was that Ukraine will not join NATO. Although greeted with horror by some in Washington and in European capitals, Hegseth’s remarks were in fact more a public statement of reality than a genuine change in policy. This position had been telegraphed throughout the Trump campaign and transition, and even the Biden administration had been skeptical of Ukrainian membership any time soon. The risks of admitting Ukraine to the alliance—reflected in widespread opposition to it in the United States, Germany, and elsewhere—have long made this reality perfectly clear to all.

. . . With the Trump administration insisting that no U.S. troops be sent to Ukraine, the conversation in European capitals is increasingly focused on whether and how European states can provide “security guarantees” through their own deployments.

Yet there are reasons to doubt whether a European guarantee to provide troops is feasible, especially without substantial U.S. involvement.

. . . Kyiv itself has long been insistent that the only way to resolve this concern is to provide Ukraine with NATO membership as part of an eventual peace deal. This is ideal from Kyiv’s point of view because it offloads the problem of preventing a future war to the United States. It would also be beneficial for European states—“cost effective,” as one EU leader recently put it—as it would rely less on spending, arms, or military deployments and more on the paper guarantee provided by NATO’s Article 5.

But NATO membership for Ukraine remains unlikely in the long term and implausible in the short term.

The piece, after surmising that a peacekeeping force would require from 50,000 to 200,000 troops, which the US refuses to provide and Europe is unable to, concludes that Ukraine should guarantee its own security. But isn't this the unworkable situation we have now? Well, we'll just strengthen and rebuild Ukraine's military!

A rebuilt and adequately supplied Ukrainian military would be a formidable deterrent to Moscow, and Western support will be critical to this military rebuilding. Rather than paper promises of NATO membership—or insufficient European troop deployments—what Ukraine needs is Western partners to provide arms and funding in the case of a future war, much as these states have done for the last three years. This could even be framed as a kind of security guarantee, in that it provides training and arms to Ukraine in peacetime and aid in a future war.

But how does this differ from current policy? The piece says flat out, the US and Europe will fund a new Ukraine military "much as these states have done for the last three years". I assume that now would involve magicallly cutting out the corruption that by Zelensky's own account siphoned off 50% of that aid. Curious about what sort of mind would devise such an imaginative solution, I discovered the author, Emma Ashford,

is a Senior Fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center. She works on a variety of issues related to the future of U.S foreign policy, international security, and the politics of global energy markets.

. . . Prior to joining the Stimson Center, Ashford was a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s New American Engagement Initiative, which focused on challenging the prevailing assumptions governing US foreign policy. She was also a research fellow in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, where she worked on a variety of issues including the US-Saudi relationship, sanctions policy, and US policy towards Russia, and US foreign policy and grand strategy more broadly.

How on earth does this "challenge" the prevailing assumptions governing US foreign policy if it envisions keeping Ukraine out of NATO -- the policy of the US at least since Dubya -- and sending hundreds of billions down a continuing black hole of military aid? I think Sundance at Conservative Treehousehas a better grasp of the situation:

Elements outside our central government, likely CIA clandestine operators in coordination with GCHQ in U.K, are the leading operators on what they frame as Ukraine military operations.

. . . Sooner or later, something is bound to happen, because the desperation to retain control amid those within the IC consortium is palpable and visible. They fear President Trump and President Putin forming a geopolitical alliance and they are reacting out of fear for diminished influence.

This presents a problem for our nation. The background here is very concerning. This is why I said, “at a certain moment, likely as a part of a media question, someone is going to ask President Trump why a certain action was taken by his administration in the Ukraine conflict. President Trump will respond by saying, “we didn’t do that.” The puzzled media will repeat the question. President Trump will again say, no one in my administration did that. . . And suddenly, things will reveal.”

Biden was never in control of the Ukraine operation. This is something that started within the U.S. State Department (CIA division) long before Biden was installed. President Trump is now having to deal with a geopolitical consequence that comes from this collaborative IC operation that is obviously no longer exclusive to the USA. Other intelligence agencies are now too far enmeshed to safely retreat.

It makes sense for President Trump to start this conversation by pointing out the Zelenskyy factor within it. It was a logical prediction to look at the scope of the problem and see Zelenskyy as the Gordion knot that needs to be cut.

Trump's currentely expressed view, which I think is the only genuinely realistic one, is that Ukraine has no credible path forward:

“I’ve been watching for years, and I’ve been watching him negotiate with no cards,” Trump said of Zelensky. “He has no cards. And you get sick of it.”

“So, I don’t think he’s very important to be at meetings, to be honest with you,” Trump added. “He makes it very hard to make deals.”

Trump suggested Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to reach a deal to end the war in Ukraine. He claimed Putin did not necessarily have to negotiate a ceasefire, because if he wanted, he’d get “the whole country.”

It looks like Trump's next steps are clear:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has few — if any — advocates in President Trump’s inner circle as the pair’s souring relationship threatens to tank Kyiv’s standing in peace talks with Russia.

. . . While the deterioration between Washington and Kyiv appears sudden, one source familiar with White House discussions told The Post Thursday: “It’s nothing new to me.

. . . The “real question is, has anyone told [Trump] they really, really like him?” the source said of the Ukrainian president.

A second source close to Trump concurred with the assessment and suggested that “the best case for [Zelensky] and the world is that he leaves to France immediately.”

I suspect this will happen soon. The alternative to the feckless dither we see on various sides of the argument is to recognize that the Ukraine war is the creation of unelected intelligence and quasi-diplomatic entities that invented the idea of a reified "Ukraine" that could defend itself without exorbitantly expensive aid that the West is no longer in a position to supply, especially when it was always assumed that the US would provide the great bulk of it.

But what about the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center, or the Atlantic Council’s New American Engagement Initiative, which fund people like Emma Ashford and are part of the machinery that brought us the Ukraine war in the first place? Aren't they actually also part of Musk's grift machine?

"The Grift Machine Has To Stop"

This is a quote from an interview with Elon Musk, where he referred specifically to the Ukraine war. But it occurs to me that this has been a key strategy for Trump since he returned to office.

For instance, the removal of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants knocks away a key cause of the problems in places like Springfield, OH and Charleroi, PA:

The Trump administration on Thursday canceled an extension of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, the latest move by the president targeting the form of immigration relief for people coming from countries facing political upheaval and natural disasters.

In June, amid the island's violent domestic turmoil, the Biden administration announced the temporary immigration protection was extended for Haitians until February 2026.

The Department of Homeland Security announced Thursday that it was vacating the extension and the protections would end on Aug. 3.

As I've discussed, for instance, here, the Haitians have been key to an elaborate NGO-driven economy. The Biden immigration policy brought in hundreds of thousands of Haitians, who needed jobs, housing, food, health care, cars, education, and so on. Other arms of the government then gave grants to NGOs, which in turn worked with sweatshop employers, their job recruiters, slumlords, community organizers, and so forth to supplement the migrants' low-pay jobs and overcrowded rentals, which drove down salaries and drove up rents.

The Haitians then strained local schools and health care resources. The NGOs apparently bought them cars, but they didn't get driver training or insurance, and the local insurance rates soared. But for the NGOs, some of which were associated with Catholic Charities, there was a guaranteed skim: part of the grants was always a generous percentage for the NGOs' administrative overhead. DOGE has been restricting these charges to 15%, when they previously had been as high as 70% -- but if the Haitians must go back to Haiti, there will be far less need for such grants going forward in any case.

The complaints from the US Catholic Bishops about cuts to their programs would have more credibility if we knew how much their programs charge for administrative overhead, as well as the precise activities they sponsor in places like Springfield. I have a suspicion that some of these programs have been hijacked by secular employees with a political agenda in conflict with Church teachings, or tacitly tolerated by local bishops with a similar agenda. At minimum, the precise budgets and line item programs need to be made transparent -- the bishops should be eager for these issues to be resolved.

The administrative overhead skim is completely legal. But I've always thought there's also an illegal skim, part of which takes the form of kickbacks to politicians, organizers, and other influential parties. The most prominent in the past week has been the $2 billion awarded to a climate group with ties to former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, described by Wikipedia as "an American politician, lawyer, voting rights activist, author, and perennial candidate", who has not held public office since leaving the Georgia House of Representatives in 2017.

The money was earmarked for Power Forward Communities — a nonprofit partnered with multiple left-wing groups founded by Abrams and which the Georgia Democrat has stated she was “thrilled” to be part of, the Washington Free Beacon reported on Wednesday.

The funds were set aside at an outside financial institution — Citibank — before Biden left office and part of a larger, $20 billion pot of money the former president’s EPA received through the Inflation Reduction Act to dole out to climate groups.

“It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told the outlet, referring to Power Forward Communities’ latest tax filings. “That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

It's hard to avoid thinking that much of such money simply finds its way into the pockets of favored figures. Cuts in at at least some foreign and domestic NGO progams have been immediater, resulting in layoffs and project terminations. In the USAID,

In the first day President Trump took office in the White House, he paused almost all of the operations of the world’s single biggest aid donor – US Agency for International Development (USAID) – for 90 days.

Prior to Trump’s pause on aid, more than 10,000 people worked for the organisation, with around two-thirds working overseas. Because of the freeze, many have been put on leave and thousands of contractors have lost their jobs. Projects across the world have also been forced to alter or cease operations entirely.

In Ukraine alone,

Shelters used by evacuees are also facing uncertain futures. One location used in Ukraine for evacuees is a concert hall in the eastern part of the country. Prior to the freeze, 60 per cent of the costs to run the shelter (around $7,000 USD) was being paid by the US.

News outlets have also been hit, such as Ukraïner – known for its war reports in many languages – which has announced it is scaling back its operations since the USAID cut. Dozens of its projects rely on financial support from the organisation.

‘We will no longer be able to make the series of war reports…because they are very expensive to produce,’ said Ukraïner’s founder Bohdan Logvynenko in a Facebook post. ‘To make them cheaper and stop traveling to the front line, we may have to significantly sacrifice quality.’

The situation in Ukraine seems to be changing by the hour. As of yesterday, there were sketchy reports that at least some US weapon shipments had been paused:

Ukrainian lawmaker Roman Kostenko, who works as the secretary of the Verkhovna Rada’s Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, told reporters on Thursday that the US weapon sales and deliveries have been halted.

Kostenko made the announcement during a press roundtable on Thursday that was later posted on YouTube.

According to Kostenko, “Deliveries of the weapons that were going to be sold have stopped. Those companies that were supposed to transfer these weapons here are now waiting, because there is no decision.”

But every indication is that Trump's people are working across the board to stop the grift machine by simply turning off the money spigot. This in turn is causing loud complaints, which is useful in itself -- as various administration figures have pointed out, the people complaining the loudest, certainly including those in Congress, are the ones losing the most. That's where we need to look.

Substance From A US Vice President

This is moralistic garbage, which is unfortunately the rhetorical currency of the globalists because they have nothing else to say.

For three years, President Trump and I have made two simple arguments: first, the war wouldn't have started if President Trump was in office;… https://t.co/xH33s6X5yf

— JD Vance (@JDVance) February 20, 2025

When I think about vice presidents, I automatically think about Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, and Joe Biden. Dick Cheney at the time was an exception, but his reputation is steadily declining. Then we're back to Al Gore, Dan Quayle, Bush père, Walter Mondale, and Spiro Agnew. Contrast all these with J D Vance's remarks in the post above about the situation on the ground in Ukraine:

. . . neither Europe, nor the Biden administration, nor the Ukrainians had any pathway to victory. This was true three years ago, it was true two years ago, it was true last year, and it is true today.

. . . President Trump is dealing with reality, which means dealing with facts. And here are some facts:

. . . Number two, Russians have a massive numerical advantage in manpower and weapons in Ukraine, and that advantage will persist regardless of further Western aid packages. Again, the aid is *currently* flowing.

. . . Number five, the conflict has placed--and continues to place--stress on tools of American statecraft, from military stockpiles to sanctions (and so much else). We believe the continued conflict is bad for Russia, bad for Ukraine, and bad for Europe. But most importantly, it is bad for the United States.

Given the above facts, we must pursue peace, and we must pursue it now. President Trump ran on this, he won on this, and he is right about this. It is lazy, ahistorical nonsense to attack as "appeasement" every acknowledgment that America's interest must account for the realities of the conflict.

There's an intriguing context here as well. One of his points in his remarks above is that the Western Europeans "pursue domestic policies (on migration and censorship) that offend the sensibilities of most Americans". This is simply an extension of his Munich address last week:

Vice President JD Vance set off a firestorm in Munich when he chastised European leaders for their hostility toward free speech, their democratic deficit and their poorly conceived immigration policies.

Vance’s shocking words — and the prospects of American disengagement — were so traumatic, they prompted French President Emmanuel Macron to cobble together an emergency summit of European leaders, where the participants promptly agreed on nothing.

. . . After three months in the shadow of the omnipresent President Trump, the Munich conference was Vance’s first opportunity in the spotlight on his own. And he was not about to let it pass with some anodyne word salad. He took the opportunity to make it into a major address on the hot-button political and cultural issues of free speech and immigration.

Here's an op-ed at USA Today:

Watching Harris speak to a crowd or give an interview made me feel humiliation for our country. I'd think, this is our best? This is who we brought to the world stage to represent us?

After listening to Vice President JD Vance defend free speech and blast censorship last week in Europe, I don't feel like that anymore. Vance has brought clarity, inspiration and leadership to the vice presidency, and he took it on the road to show Europeans who America is now and why we hold Western values so dear.

Vance is the kind of vice president Americans deserve.

. . . Have you ever been in a toxic, dysfunctional relationship then met someone healthy and new and thought, "Wow, I didn't realize how bad things were until now?" That is how millions of Americans feel now that Vance is representing the United States here and abroad.

. . . Americans deserve a vice president who is a powerful envoy − an ambassador of our ideas.

On one hand, Vance is something completely new, or almost -- Theodore Roosevelt as vice president under McKinley might be comparable, and McKinley is at least arguably comparable to Trump:

William McKinley (January 29, 1843 – September 14, 1901) was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. A member of the Republican Party, he led a realignment that made Republicans largely dominant in the industrial states and nationwide for decades. He successfully led the U.S. in the Spanish–American War, overseeing a period of American expansionism, with the annexations of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Hawaii. McKinley also rejected inflationary plans such as free silver in favor of keeping the nation on the gold standard, and raised protective tariffs.

But while Roosevelt rose as a reforming politician and active media figure in the years before he became vice president -- and even during the 1900 campaign, when he enthusiastically supported McKinley as his running mate -- according to Wikipedia, he lost interesst in the vice presidency.

The office was a powerless sinecure and did not suit Roosevelt's aggressive temperament. Roosevelt's six months as vice president were uneventful and boring for a man of action. He had no power; he presided over the Senate for a mere four days before it adjourned.

Vance, on the other hand, appears to be playing the office for all it's worth. I'm not sure if we've ever seen anything like this.

Kickbacks?

Trump and Musk have been doing a lot of teasing about the hundreds of billions that are going to the wrong places. but so far. they haven't come out with many specifics. One of his latest targets has been Ukraine:

President Zelenskyy said last week that he doesn’t know where half of the money is that we gave him. We gave them, I believe, US$350 billion, but let’s say it’s something less than that. But it's a lot. . . Where is all the money that’s been given?

I've never seen an accounting of it.

Sundance comments at Conservative Treehouse,

President Trump seems increasingly close to exposing the truth about the Ukraine war and how U.S. politicians are motivated in their influence positions by the financial benefits of the conflict.

Sundance himself has been naming names. Observing the European security meeting in Munich last week, he said,

The U.S. congressional delegation (CODEL) to the Munich Security Conference consists of key Republicans (DeceptiCons) and corrupt Democrats who fund the Ukraine money laundry. A process that includes kick-backs of the proceeds to the bank accounts of the Republicans and Democrats present.

. . . All of these congressional delegation members receive kickbacks as part of their indulgence package, many sit on the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Senators include: Chris Murphy, Roger Wicker, Sheldon Whitehouse, Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn, Jeanne Shaheen, Chris Coons, Thom Tillis, Chris Van Hollen, Joni Ernst, Elissa Slotkin, Adam Schiff, and one more I cannot quite make out, possibly Peter Welch.

Every one of these senators are working against the Trump administration, openly or under cover. Every one!

Roger Wicker was Pete Hegseth’s legislative confirmation guide and the republican Senator who went bananas yesterday when Secretary Hegseth said Ukraine would not gain NATO membership. You will easily remember Joni Ernst immediate opposition to Hegseth also.

Sundance refers to remarks by Trump at a February 12 press conference:

President Trump notes the corruption being outlined is of such a massive number, “billions and billions”, that there is no way these payments do not include kickbacks, likely to politicians. Trump then turns to AG Bondi and remarks that this is something the AG will likely have to look at. “There’s a lot of things to look at Pam.”

. . . “Nobody cares” within the system, President Trump remarks. Saying if that attitude permeates long enough the government “loses control” of the payment process. This appears to be the general finding within the DOGE review of various agencies. The “waste, fraud and abuse,” is a feature of the current process, not a flaw. It appears to be purposeful and happening by design of the runaway government created in the aftermath of Obama and Biden.

President Trump notes the judicial challenges to the DOGE review essentially, give the corrupt officials “time to cover their tracks.”

So far, the legacy media has insisted that these claims are without merit. For instance, Forbes wrote,

Musk claimed while taking questions from reporters at the White House on Tuesday that federal employees, including those at USAID, “managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars” while working for the federal government, accusing them of profiting off of taxpayer money. He did not name names, but said “quite a few people,” whom he called “fraudsters,” were receiving “kickbacks.” Musk offered no evidence of who is getting rich or by how much, and he did not elaborate on specific instances of any criminal activity, including fraud.

. . . There’s no evidence to suggest USAID has engaged in money laundering. On Saturday afternoon, Musk reposted a claim on X that suggested USAID was a “form of money laundering tax payers money into far-left organizations,” adding: “Absolutely,” though neither poster offered sources or factual information. Although Republicans have criticized the organization for alleged wasteful spending, there’s no evidence that USAID was engaging in criminal behavior to support left-wing organizations.

Here's why I think there's something behind the tease -- look at the senators who've been falling into line to confirm every one of Trump's cabinet level nominees. Take, for instance.Joni Ernst:

Ernst, as an advocate for women serving in combat roles and for cracking down on sexual assault in the military, was initially viewed as a Republican senator who would be extremely skeptical of Hegseth’s nomination, given his past statements on women in combat.

“I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated,” Hegseth told podcast host Shawn Ryan in early November.

. . . Senate observers thought Ernst, herself a rape survivor, might have a hard time voting for Hegseth after it was revealed that a woman accused him of sexual assault at a Republican women’s convention in Monterrey, Calif., in 2017.

But notice that Ernst appears on Sundance's list of senators he suspects of getting kickbacks from Ukraine at the link above. She may have wanted to assert her independence from the Orange Man, or she might have wanted to get something more in return for a yes vote, but suddenly she was with the program. And Murkowski and Collins were on board as well -- the only exception has been Mitch McConnell, which is not to say he's sinless -- far from it, I'm sure. But he's a sick man, and Trump can get along without him.

This is not the Trump of 2017. He has something on every Republican, and every one of them has been told this.

How Not To Think About History

The problem with Glenn Reynolds and the other contributors to the Instapundit blog is that they're intellectual welterweights at best. Reynolds is a transhumanist who used to talk a lot about Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity, not so muich lately, probably because like the melting of the polar ice, it was supposed to happen but hasn't. He's also a libertarian, which is a different way of saying he's an Ayn Rand cultist. I've never been able to find out if he has a contract to have his head frozen when he dies.

The other day I ran across a link on that site to an odd essay purporting to explain what's happening, “Trump marks the overdue end of the Long Twentieth Century”, which is actually just a link to yet another essay, the sort of thing they love at Instapundit.

The 125 years between the French Revolution in 1789 and the outbreak of WWI in 1914 was later described as the “Long Nineteenth Century”. The phrase recognized that to speak of “the nineteenth century” was to describe far more than a specific hundred-year span on the calendar; it was to capture the whole spirit of an age: a rapturous epoch of expansion, empire, and Enlightenment, characterized by a triumphalist faith in human reason and progress. That lingering historical spirit, distinct from any before or after, was extinguished in the trenches of the Great War.

So wait a moment. World War I happened because the 19th century went on too long? (I used to get in a lot of trouble in college and grad school for asking questions like this in class.) Eventually I found some contrarian professors who explained that it was a serious error to hypostatize centuries, to treat an abstract entity as if it has real qualities. For example, the 18th century was the Age of Reason. Thus Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was a rationalist, which he definitely was not.

Or David Hume (1711-1776), who said, “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions”. The essay continues,

R.R. Reno opens his 2019 book Return of the Strong Gods by quoting a young man who laments that “I am twenty-seven years old and hope to live to see the end of the twentieth century”. His paradoxical statement captures how the twentieth century has also extended well past its official sell-by date in the year 2000.

So Trump happened because the 20th century went on too long, but that was only because the 19th century started early but ran late.

The spirit of the Long Twentieth could not be more different from that which preceded it. In the wake of the horrors inflicted by WWII, the leadership classes of America and Europe understandably made “never again” the core of their ideational universe. They collectively resolved that fascism, war, and genocide must never again be allowed to threaten humanity.

But wasn't it a major theme of much literature in or about the inter-war period the disillusionment with the noble cause of the "war to end wars"? What about Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and its epigraph from Gertrude Stein, "You are all a lost generation", or Whittaker Chambers in Witness describing the formative effect his travels in post-Versailles Germany had on him? In fact, there is a whole post-World War II literary school that simply echoes the 1920s cynicism, Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

In fact, Paul Fussell in The Great War and Modern Memory discusses in detail the effect of the widespread destruction on literary disillusionment, but one of the key literary works he cites as an example is Heller's 1961 Catch-22, set in World War II with an overall Marxist-Leninist subtext. Indeed, the essayist who traces 20th-century thought to "never again" idealism completely neglects Viet Nam-era disillusionment with establishment foreign policy.

On one hand, the historical view that the Zeitgeist must eventually glance at the calendar and update itself, especially if it's getting late, is an absurdity. On the other hand, if the explanation for Trump isn't that the 20th century went on too long, what's a better explanation?

I still have to fall back on the populist writer Ferdinand Lundberg and The Rich and the Super-Rich. His explanation for the state of American society from the post-Civil War period onward is that it had been dominated by an oligarchical class made up largely of the extended families and descendents of the industrial robber barons. They were in a position to control media, dominate intellectual life by endowing foundations, universities, and private schools, control religious institutions like The Episcopal Church, and place themselves or their hirelings at policy government levels in both parties.

There was a strong consensus among this class on the social agenda. It was dominated by the late 19th century paradigm of Fabian socialism, whereby the upper class, driven by fear of the Marxist proletarian revolution, would temporize and co-opt working class demands with gradual but meaningless reforms whose intent was to provide an illusion of progress while keeping the upper class in place. A secondary goal after the civil rights movement was to temporize with the threat of a helter-skelter race war by a program of token concessions to minorities.

It seems to me that the explanation for Trump is the loss of this consensus among the upper class. One factor is the receding fear of a world proletarian revolution due to the collapse of the Marxist-Leninist model by the 1990s. Another is that the expense of both the Cold War style military strategies and Fabian social programs has become unsustainable. The token concessions to minorities have also proven ineffective, while they reduce the morale and productivity of the working class overall.

This reassessment is by no means unanimous, in part because a substantial part of the upper class recognizes that whatever happens to the population at large, they can still pay off whomever needs to be paid off, and within their gated communities and exclusive condos, life will go on. What seems to have occurred, though, is that a new wealthy class has come up with fewer ties to the established foundations, universities, and other institutions. It's new money that comes from another generation of technical innovation that makes the older consensus less relevant.

But the older consensus dates from the 19th century, not the post-World War II period. It seems to me that Trump happened because he was able to form a working majority among the wealthy that would entertain a new paradigm that as yet isn't fully formed.